


Bring the Heavens Down (Under)

by faufaren



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Child Abuse, Child Soldiers, Cyborgs, Dark Fantasy, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, No Smut, Nonbinary Frisk, Original Character-centric, Post-Apocalypse, Science Fiction & Fantasy, i think i’ll call this archtale
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 07:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15335328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faufaren/pseuds/faufaren
Summary: Humanity has managed to figure out how to violate not only the body but also the soul, and they pay the price for unearthing such abominable knowledge. In which the world has fallen apart, the skies bleed red and white, and the Nightmare has lasted for far longer than it should have.OC-insert into Archtale AU of Undertale. Purely for self-enjoyment.





	Bring the Heavens Down (Under)

_Year 20XX. Five years after the Collapse of Society._

Another mission. Supply hunt. The Director doesn’t blink an eye and no one else speaks a word. Some of the adults watch them ago with pity in their gaze and others sneer in spiteful satisfaction. But most of them are just glad they aren’t the ones being sent out. Never mind that it was a job that would have been much more appropriately assigned to a team of adults, instead of two children. 

Coyote says it’s how human nature has evolved to be, that adults have always been stupidly desperate to take as much control over a situation that can’t be controlled. Frisk glances at Coyote, who is keeping pace beside them as the two of them traverse the forsaken landscape. The boy is silent as usual, his footsteps light and swift over the uneven ground even with the extra kilos of weight gained from the mechanical augmentations built into him. 

Dark eyes flash over to Frisk, curious and inquiring. Ever the attentive one, Coyote. Frisk shakes their head, confirming that all is well. They see the digital pupils of the mechanical eyes that replace Coyote’s original ones expand and contract as he does a once-over check, just in case. 

“Dangerous,” comes the quiet reply, nearly whispered in a low voice. Frisk hears the frustration contained in the word. 

Frisk shrugs helplessly. What can they do about it? Children like them are easily taken advantage of like that. The adults are the ones who run the compound, the ones who feed them and give them a place to sleep. Disobedience has always ended badly. Frisk is sick of watching Coyote take a beating in their place. 

(Being a battledog is even worse. Leftovers of the arenas like Coyote––they are largely sought after by camp compounds such as theirs because of their high range of uses. Frisk once overheard a conversation between two officers, one of them having come back from a collaborative mission with another battledog from another camp. 

“Were they insane?” The man had been ranting. “That crazy stunt could have killed us all!” 

The other shrugs like it is an obvious thing. “What do you expect, they’re battledogs. They do shit like that. No sense of self-preservation, no fear for their lives, and they don’t believe they have a future to live for… That’s why when the situation gets tough, they don’t hesitate at all. That sort of quick thinking and recklessness is a trademark of theirs.” 

“Fuckin’ hell, man. I heard that they’ve been trained to do anything for the sake of the mission, I just never expected... fuckin' _that_.” 

“That’s right, you’re fairly new around here. Well, you’ll get used to it, with our own dog in the compound. It’s convenient to have these things on hand, you’ll see.”) 

Frisk shudders, and feels the attentive gaze of Coyote on their back once again. Frisk looks over their shoulder and gives a reassuring smile as Coyote comes closer to walk by their right shoulder, just a step back. He’s always walking behind them, letting Frisk lead the way and simultaneously staying in a position that is most ideal for striking down enemies, for shielding with his own body, for protecting. 

Suddenly, there’s a roar, so piercing and deafening that Frisk nearly covers their ears in pain. It’s the cry of a predator that’s caught scent of its prey, an awful scream that’s designed to induce terror and freeze lesser beings in fear. 

The cry of a Hunter. 

A hand wraps around Frisk’s arm and they’re herded back behind Coyote, who sinks down into a combative stance, ready to attack or flee at a moment’s notice. 

It’s quiet for a while as Coyote tries to figure out where the Hunter might be, arms out at his sides, hands at a ready position and still and silent as a statue, the only movement being his eyes, which are darting around furiously. He takes a careful breath and his ears twitch, every enhancement and modification being used to detect even the smallest of changes in the environment around them, every fibre of his being prepared to throw himself into the line of fire if retreat could not be accessed in time. 

“Coyote––” Frisk starts, wanting to say that they didn’t need the protection, that he should protect himself, too. It’s times like these that Frisk’s wishes that Coyote could have grown up under different circumstances, could have led a different life, became especially prominent. Frisk hates that this world has screwed their friend up so much that he has to center his entire life around following orders to believe that he still has a reason to exist. 

The words won’t come out, though. Frisk knows that even if they tell Coyote, as they have done many times in the past, he won’t be able to understand. He’ll give them that look of endless bewilderment, which always made him look so sad and confused it hurt to look at him, as if Frisk had kicked him in the gut without any provocation or explanation why. He’ll stiffen up and quietly ask, like he’s preparing himself for something painful, whether he’s doing something wrong. 

(There was a time when Frisk didn’t understand quite as well, back then, how far deep these habits were ingrained into Coyote, so much that they were like instinct by now. Frisk had decided to push, tried to somehow _make_ Coyote understand that what was done to him was _wrong_ and this was _wrong_. It hadn’t gone well. 

“Frisk,” Coyote says, sounding so confused, “Why are you doing this?” 

And Frisk could hear how he tried to maintain his usual calm and unaffected stoicness, but Frisk’s words had shattered that composure and his voice came out brittle and hurt.

“What am I doing wrong?” He whispered forlornly.

And then, sucking in a breath, “Do you—do you not want me anymore?” He asked, unsteady, so quiet it hardly carried over the unending silence of the tent they shared.

Frisk rushed to reassure him, “I’ll always want you here, Coyote.” 

“You have me,” Coyote insisted, voice cracking. “All of me, every inch of me—I’ll do whatever you want me to. Whatever you want, I’ll give to you. Give me orders and I’ll get them done, no matter how impossible it seems. I’ll crush anything that gets in your way.” 

“No!” Frisk says before they can think about it, the word slipping out in the midst of their horror, and Coyote flinches like he’d been slapped. “I…” Frisk was on the cusp of protesting everything he had said, about to tell him that they didn’t want any of that, that all Frisk wanted was a _friend._ But the moment they looked into his eyes, they realized that wasn’t going to be possible. 

What a terrible world to live in, Frisk thought, and amended their earlier careless statement. 

“No––of course, Coyote. I want you by my side. You can follow my orders if you want. You can even give me your undying loyalty.” They paused, taking a moment to gather the correct words. “Coyote, the world we live in is rotten. One day, I hope you’ll understand. Children shouldn’t be forced to fight for survival, and they shouldn’t be made to fight for adults. Everyday, kids like us die on out on missions that are meant to be done by adults. So many of us die. We’re going to survive, though. Together. I won’t leave you and you won’t leave me, okay?” 

WIde eyed, Coyote nodded. “Okay.” 

There was something in the way he said that word––like a promise; a mixture of determination and irrational devotion, like he was cementing his place by Frisk’s side for the rest of his life––that had Frisk’s heart break a little for him. 

From that day on, Coyote never broke that promise.) 

The roar sounds again, much, much closer this time. Frisk only has time to turn around in alarm before a giant, hulking beast tears itself out of the shadows. They see its giant maw close in upon them, time frozen in place as Frisk meets their impending death. 

Then there’s a flash of silver and a loud screech of metal as an arm wraps itself around Frisk’s waist and jerks them back just as those jaws clamp down on Coyote’s other arm instead. 

Frisk hears Coyote grunt quietly above them, head tucked beneath his chin protectively. Coyote pivots on one foot and kicks the beast in the face in three quick successions, like a piston. It lets out a ferocious snarl, letting go of his arm. Even for a beastial Hunter, that amount of raw mechanical strength to the face couldn’t have been pleasant. 

There’s a silent, tense pause as the two of them face down the Hunter and it decides what to do next. Frisk sees its tail––a lean, corded, muscular thing with a wicked barb at the end like a fish hook, meant for piercing and gutting––slowly rise up behind its hulking form. Coyote sees it too. 

_“Run.”_

They turn and run. A roar rattles the air from behind them as the Hunter gives pursuit. 

Frisk’s legs are moving as fast as they can, but Frisk still thinks that they can feel the Hunter’s breath against their neck, hot and acrid like sulfur and getting closer by the second. 

We’re not going to make it, Frisk thinks. I’m too slow. 

Then arms wrap around them and Frisk yelps as they’re scooped up into a piggy back carry on Coyote’s back. 

“Hold on,” he tells them, cold and battle calm, breath unaffected even though the adrenaline must be running through his bloodstream (though it’s regulated, just as everything else in his body is. The engineers had no qualms about about far or deep they wanted to violate his body.) 

Then Frisk feels the air resistance strengthen, feels the force of gravity being generated as Coyote uses all his mechanical speed to its full capacity. Frisk hears the whir of bionics, the crackle of electricity, and sees the path of churned dirt and dust and destroyed rock face that Coyote leaves in his wake. 

They’re going faster than a train at its highest speed, Frisk knows from experience, and soon enough the beast disappears far into the distance. Even then, it’s a while before they stop, and by that time Frisk can no longer hear the sound of pursuit. 

Frisk is set gently with both feet solidly on the ground. They endure Coyote’s subsequent fussing over them with good grace, reassuring him that yes, they did have all their limbs intact, and no, the beast hadn’t been able to touch a single hair on them, thanks to Coyote. 

Coyote looks at Frisk with something unreadable in his eyes, nods to himself as if verifying to himself that Frisk really is safe and unharmed, and steps back a few feet. He looks around the area, mechanical iris in his eyes expanding and contracting. 

“No path,” he tells Frisk, frowning. 

Frisk takes a look around, and has to agree. The area around them is overgrown with plants and wild flora. The trees are tall and thick, extending into the canopy with no end in sight, more ancient than they had ever seen. 

In the process of getting the Hunter off their tail, they had strayed far from the path they usually followed. Returning to camp will be much harder now. 

Frisk wanders to a patch of ferns, crouching down and rubbing the soft edges of the leaves in thought. The plant life suggests they are deeper in the forestal areas of the mountain range than Frisk is rather comfortable with. Going into deep forest has always been dangerous and warned against. Rumors, half fashioned from reality and passed around in hushed tones, tell of people mysteriously going missing; of people who wandered in and never returning; of others who returned, but missing… _parts._

The growl is their only warning before a solid force rams into Frisk’s side out of nowhere. They land hard on the ground, the impact driving the breath out of their lungs. 

Somewhere above Frisk’s head, the Hunter roars. 

“Frisk!” Coyote yells in alarm. Before he can reach them, however, he has to jump back to avoid getting gutted by the beast’s tail, which is wildly whipping around. 

“Coyote!” Frisk lets out a short scream as sharp talons dig deep into their side, drawing blood and making them light headed with pain. 

The sound that comes from Coyote is a desperate, ferocious thing, loaded with equal parts fear and rage. He charges at the Hunter about to deal the killing strike, disregarding the danger of the tail altogether in his bid to save Frisk. 

With a cry, he plows headlong into the Hunter, knocking it entirely off its feet. But the Hunter twists in midair, like a cat, landing heavily on all fours and its tail strikes out before Coyote could regain his balance. Seeing it out of the corner of his eye, he twists wildly, managing to avoid getting impaled on the piercing hook but unprepared for the rest of the corded tail when it comes swinging back. 

It hits him in the gut, driving bile up his throat from the impact. Were he a regular human, he would have died of organ rupture. Coyote goes flying several feet, but not before he grabs the end of the tail in a savage grip, desperate to keep the Hunter away from the small body on the ground mere feet away. 

Coyote lands hard, hands still wrapped tightly on the tail and he wastes no time in _pulling_. The ground shatters beneath him as he digs his feet in even further and Hunter roars as it’s dragged away, thrown into the air, and released. 

The Hunter swipes at him with its claws, its attention successfully diverted onto Coyote. Coyote dodges. He looks at it, then to Frisk, then back again, indecisive. 

In the end, Frisk makes the decision for him. 

“C-Coyote…” Frisk reaches out for him, pale and breathless. Blood drips from between their fingers, hand clasped to the wound in their side. There’s worry in their eyes but it’s worry for Coyote, facing down this bloodthirsty beast by himself, and Coyote can’t understand why even in this situation Frisk would be concerned about him when he knows that they know that his strength and durability make grown men weak and powerless in comparison. 

Frisk isn’t weak at all—they have the sort of lean, wiry, scrappy strength that all camp base children have developed from supply hunts, missions, and tasks around the camp. But Frisk is just a normal human child, with no augmentations to their name. Next to Coyote, Frisk is as fragile as glass. Frisk looks so hurt and vulnerable that Coyote can’t help but automatically take a step in their direction. 

Inherently, this diverts the Hunter’s attention back to Frisk, who freezes in place as the predator’s gaze lands on them. Coyote is already in motion before the beast lunges. He throws himself at Frisk, scooping them up just as the beast’s razor-edge claws tears into his back. He lands and rolls across the ground, grunting when the impact sends the new wounds on his back into flares of white pain. 

“Coyote, your back—!” But Coyote is already dodging the next attack that comes, taking Frisk with him again. The next time he lands, the ground feels uneven beneath his feet, pulling him out of balance. 

He looks back; there’s a sudden drop in the ground elevation he hadn’t noticed before, but overgrowth blocks him from seeing more. 

He shouldn’t have done that. Out of the corner of his vision, the Hunter pounces. Coyote only has time to stumble back before it descends upon them. 

On the next step back, his foot lands on empty air. 

The Hunter’s claws misses his face by an inch as he falls backwards into the massive hole in the ground. The Hunter falls with them. 

The air around them becomes cooler, damper, as they descend underground, and the Hunter’s roars pierces through the sound of the air whipping past them. 

His mind is on the precious cargo in his arms, though; on the fingers clenched tightly in his shirt and the hair tickling his nose beneath his chin. He wraps Frisk tighter in his arms and turns them around so that Frisk is on top and his back faced the bottom. He braces himself, knowing that a fall from this height would do damage, no matter how strong his body was. 

It’s a softer landing than expected. Coyote grunts as all the air is driven out from him, as the impact splatters his blood across the golden flowerfield they had fallen into. His back flares anew with a new, deep throbbing pain. But Frisk is still in his arms, clutched tightly, and from the sound of their heartbeat, Coyote can tell that no new injuries had been added. _Good._

Then Frisk coughs. It’s a wet, horrible noise that is nothing good. Coyote freezes. 

The wound from earlier. 

“Frisk?” he touches their hair lightly, suddenly afraid. He repeats himself, a tinge of desperation in his voice now. “Frisk?” 

The body in his arms move slightly, and Coyote can feel the tremble of exertion that movement costs. Frisk’s head turns upwards, and they give him a smile that even he can tell is entirely forced. 

“Hi there, Coyote,” Frisk says, but their voice sounds weak, the sound barely there. “Thanks for saving me again…” something in their breath catches and they start coughing again. 

Coyote sits upright, clutching Frisk’s body, shaking with wet, bloody coughs. Every harsh cough causes Coyote to flinch, as he tries to think of what to do, how to help Frisk, how to make them better, how to fix the problem. 

There’s bloody phlegm dripping from Frisk’s lips and Coyote can’t do anything but watch Frisk cough and gasp and then grow limp in his arms. Coyote stills. 

Nearby, the Hunter lands, sending up a whirlwind of golden petals flying around the hollow. It emits a tear-rending cry; a blood-curdling sound that would make any living creature flee. 

But Coyote can’t look anywhere other than Frisk’s too-pale face, blue beneath the eyes and red speckled across their mouth. Coyote doesn’t hear anything other than Frisk’s shallow, labored breathing, and suddenly the world boils itself down to one singular sensation. 

_**Rage.** _

He rolls over, placing Frisk carefully on the field of flowers before standing up (he would have wondered at them--at the mysterious golden flowers flourishing at the bottom of the earth, at the enormous cavern that hollowed out as if something enormous had nested there centuries ago--he would have definitely asked questions if his mind hadn’t blanked in _black, murderous fury_ ). The Hunter shakes itself off from the fall. 

He isn’t a fixer––healing wounds and caring for people and making things right again, that is something only Frisk knows how to do. But Coyote knows how to be the soldier. He knows how to hurt and kill and destroy. That is what he is designed for. That is the only thing he knows how to do. 

Coyote attacks. 

* * *

It’s normally very difficult to kill a Hunter, with chances so low it’s nearly impossible to do so without an abundance of luck and fortune on your side. The best thing to do when a Hunter is nearby is to hide and wait until it went away. 

The monsters watch in the shadows with a sort of horrified amazement as the human child completely rips the Hunter to shreds. 

The boy is ferocious, a feral snarl on his face as he catches the beast by the maw and pulls its jaws apart and _continues to pull_ until it starts to split apart at the seams and the Hunter’s roars turns to rattling death shrieks. There is something strange and metallic on his limbs, seemingly covering them, though the monsters are too far away to get a clearer look, and the boy moves entirely too fast and his strength is entirely too enormous to be human. 

When the Hunter is reduced to nothing but a pile of steaming flesh and twitching limbs, its dark blood seeping into the buttercup field, the boy runs back to the other human, whom the little monsters can tell is wounded from the smell of them. Strangely enough, the boy makes sure to hastily scrub the blood from his face and wipe his hands on the flowers to rid them of the rank blood of the Hunter before he dares to touch the fallen human. 

The monsters are wary (after the Hunters appeared, everyone have been a little more cautious, a little more untrusting towards humans and anything that come from the Surface), but one of the children is injured and despite the earlier display of violence, the other human appears desperate enough for it to be genuine. It isn’t a monster’s nature to ignore the cry of help from a child, no matter what they witnessed before.

* * *

The creature that approaches him is nothing like what he’s ever seen before, but she speaks gently to him in a language he knows and offers aid, and Coyote is desperate enough to save Frisk that he accepts it despite the instinctual paranoia ingrained into him telling him not to trust _anyone._

She introduces herself as Toriel. 

Coyote follows her though the labyrinth, to the place he was told the monsters called Home. 

(There are more of the strangest things; creatures that try to look like frogs but don’t seem to have gotten it exactly right, creatures that have the shape of a carrot but with wide grinning faces, and others of all variety that he doesn’t have the mind to really keep track of.)

Toriel takes the opportunity to take a better look at the strange human boy, who hadn’t given his name yet. For that matter, he hasn’t spoken a word beyond “save Frisk.” She watches how he flinches away from the Froggits who come near, curious at the new arrivals in the Ruins, and she sees him eye the Dummy warily when they pass it by. Carrying the small, hurt child, whom she deduces is the one named Frisk, she doesn’t attempt to take the boy’s hand when they cross the spike trap puzzle, but she doesn’t miss how he makes an aborted motion as they start to head onto the secret path. 

The strange metal on him she’d seen from afar turns out to be what she can only recognize to be cybernetic prosthetics. 

She hasn’t seen them since the war, so many long years ago. 

She didn’t think the humans would be still practicing those gruesome methods—didn’t think that knowledge of that vile particular sort of technology wouldn’t have gone obsolete by now, as abominable as it was back then. 

From what she can see through the shredded tears on his shirt, they replace both his arms. She doesn’t know if his legs are the same, but from the weight of his footsteps and how deep his feet sink into the dirt, she suspects that it is quite likely. 

Though it is old science, she can easily recognize the major advancements in technology since she last saw mechanical augmentations. 

The design is sleeker, more intricate. Built to be closer to the human form now than simply clunky robotic parts grafted over limbs. And… not merely flesh-deep levels of altercations, as it had been when the human soldiers fought in the war. No, it goes deeper, though she can’t tell how much more. 

It doesn’t take much to come to the conclusion that the boy’s modifications hadn’t been entirely consensual. 

Toriel can tell from the scars on his back, seen through the claw tears of his shirt. (She had offered to heal the wounds on his back, but he refused, insisting that Frisk took priority. He looked surprised at first mention of it, as if he’d forgotten he had been hurt in the first place.) 

She can tell from the way his jawbone and clavicle jut out sharply against his skin despite his obvious muscle, the unchanging expression on his face like he’s lost the ability to output his emotions. The way he looks at himself as if he doesn’t recognize himself anymore; he treats his body like it’s merely a tool meant to be useful instead of something to be protected and cared for. 

They reach Home in the ruins, and Toriel places the child named Frisk in bed after an arduous process of healing the fairly extensive injuries the child had acquired. Wounds inflicted by the Beasts, in particular, have always been more difficult and resistant to healing magic. 

The boy refuses to go anywhere where Frisk isn’t within eyesight. He stands guard at the bed, watching over the child’s resting form with a silent intensity that Toriel doesn’t quite know how to react to. 

She inquires about his preferences— _cinnamon or butterscotch_ —just as she had done for the children that came before. To no avail, when the boy, still nameless, stares at her in wide-eyed, abject confusion, as if he had never even heard of the two spices. 

Suppressing a sigh, Toriel goes into the kitchen to make the pie anyway. Snail pie would’ve been nice, but it might be a little bit too heavy on the palette, especially for the recovering Frisk, once the child awakes. Digging through the cupboards reveals that she in fact had only the ingredients for butterscotch, and that asking for preference had been entirely moot. 

When it comes time to sleep, Toriel checks on the children’s bedroom one last time, only to see that Coyote had taken the blanket and had curled up on the floor against Frisk’s bed. The two slices of butterscotch pie remain untouched, now cold, still in the same place she had left them originally. 

As if sensing her presence, the dark form at the foot of the bed shifts slightly, and the boy lifts his head. He stares at her just as he had done since their meeting; silent, unreadable, intense. 

(His eyes glow faintly in the shadows. The rings of digital lens that make up his eyes pulse and spin lazily around his pupil, eerily sharp behind messy bangs.) 

Toriel bids him a good night, and just refrains from locking the door.

* * *

Toriel reminds him of one of the women at the compound who used to sneak him sweet buns whenever the other adults weren’t looking. Coyote remembers her name. Bijou had been close to Frisk, and in extension, had a fond relationship with Coyote as well. Other people thought the woman was odd, wasting her time with the odd orphan children, but Coyote remembers why he liked her––fierce like a fire but warm like a hearth, the woman had more compassion and strength of will than most of the people in the compound combined. 

Bijou used to be a mother before she lost the first two to the Hunters and the third to illness. After that, she took care of the compound’s many orphans until one day she volunteered for a mission no one else would take and never came back. 

Perhaps those few stark similarities between Bijou and Toriel are what stops Coyote from sneaking out of the cozy little house with Frisk tucked into his arms in the dead of the night. Perhaps that is why Coyote waits all the way to when morning supposedly comes, hours later. 

There are no windows, no sun and moon cycles in the belly of the underground, but Coyote knows when morning arrives from a little digital ping in his ear that tells him how many hours it’s been since he last ate, and what percentage his remaining energy levels are. A few minutes later, he hears the soft footsteps of Toriel come down the hall, pause for a few moments outside the door of the bedroom where Coyote and Frisk reside, then continue on past. 

Coyote relaxes from the position he hadn’t been aware he’d automatically assumed, fingers twitching toward the picture frame on the drawer, ready to crack it open and use the glass shards for distraction. (Then, engage in combat. He doesn’t know which one would win—his enhanced physical strength against Toriel’s brand of monster magic, but a few fireballs doesn’t sound too damaging. He is made too well for that.) 

When the body on the bed shifts and Frisk’s eyes flutter open, Coyote is there in an instant, crashing to his knees at their side, hands raised to help but afraid to make contact, hovering uselessly just inches away. Frisk gets their elbows underneath them and struggles to sit up, turning their head, and only then Coyote finally gathers up the courage to bring a metal hand to Frisk’s back and ease them up the rest of the way. 

“G’morning,” says Frisk. The words slur and it’s a little sleepy-sounding but then Frisk smiles at him, and it’s like having the clouds clear from the sky, like waking up fully rested, like tasting cold, clean water. 

Coyote feels something lift from his chest and all of a sudden he can breathe easier now. “Frisk,” he whispers, like it’s a sigh of relief. 

The past few hours he had watched Frisk sleep away on that cheery little bed had been spent in constant worry, constant uncertainty and a sharp feeling of lost gnawing slowly away at him. But now Frisk is awake. Everything will be alright, as long as Frisk is there. 

(Without Frisk, he had nowhere to go. No direction, no orders to follow. The world descends into this faded, blurry picture of grays and he’ll be left to stumble blindly around, without any hope of finding himself again. He doesn’t know what he’d do if Frisk ever went away. Die, probably.) 

“Where are we?” Frisk asks, looking curiously around the room. 

“Somewhere underground. A safehouse, or some sort of base of the woman monster who healed you.” Coyote bows his head, suddenly awash with immense _shame_ , dismayed at himself that he’d allowed Frisk to remain in such a foreign, unknown place for so long, especially unconscious and completely defenseless. 

“She calls it Home,” he adds, remembering the fondness with which Toriel had said it, and the melancholy in her gaze. He figures that the name must mean something significant. 

Frisk looks carefully at Coyote. They wonder if Coyote has any idea what that word means, only half-hoping that he does. In the end, Frisk knows all too well that he probably has never heard of it in his life. 

The compound where Frisk had spent little more than half their life in had never been and will likely never be a home to either of them. But Frisk still remembers the concept of homes, and counts themself lucky to be one of the few people born in their generation who still remembers the feeling of once having one, long ago. 

Coyote makes a small noise of alarm when Frisk moves to get out of the bed. Frisk twists and swings their feet onto the floor and fights back a wave of black spots in their vision, batting away Coyote hands when he tries to help. Frisk rubs their chest, feeling nothing there––no sting, no lingering ache, no scar––to ever mark that they had been injured in the first place. _Monster magic,_ Frisk concludes, and nearly can’t believe that all those fairy tales about the Underground and the war between humans and monsterkind are actually _real._

“Hey,” Frisk says, huffing in laughter a bit. Coyote had gone and fetched their boots, and now attempting to tug one up Frisk’s socked foot. Frisk kicks lightly in playful protest, and suddenly Coyote is nowhere near them; he’s standing three feet back from where he was, his back straight and hands tucked behind him like he’d just touched fire. 

“I’m sorry, Frisk,” he says, solemnly. “It won’t happen again.” 

He bows his head, again––that habitual posture Frisk knows might as well be programmed into him by now, the same submissive position Frisk has seen Coyote assume hundreds of times at the compound when he’s waiting for _punishment_ , which usually includes some sort of beating or prolonged starvation that makes Frisk’s blood _boil_ with anger. 

Frisk sighs, partially in defeat and partially out of heartbreak for their friend that he still sometimes treats Frisk the same way he behaves with the rest of the awful people he had met in his life. 

“It’s okay, Coyote, you did nothing wrong,” Frisk assures him as they reach over to lace up their boots. “I just wanted tell you that I can do it myself, that’s all.” 

Coyote nods, looking like he’s taking notes in his mind and ingraining it into his memory. 

“Is… that pie?” Frisk asks, in lieu of letting out another sigh. They’d woken up to the smell of something sweet in the room, and the sight of two slices of pie on separate plates set out on the floor as if someone had personally delivered it to the bedroom has Frisk curious. 

“The woman monster who healed you. She baked––” Here Coyote paused, as if unsure of the authenticity of the next word. “––butterscotch pie.” 

“That’s so nice of her, did you not feel like eating?” 

“I.” This time Coyote frowns in thought. He glances at the two slices of pie, sitting innocuously by the door, and looks back almost helplessly at Frisk. “I couldn’t identify some ingredients in it. There might be something in there that’s harmful or potentially poisonous. We still don’t know whatever end goal the woman monster has in helping us.” 

Frisk raises their brow knowingly. “If she was really going to eat us or something, do you think she would have healed me first or waited this long?” they pointed out. “In other words, you had no idea what to do when someone genuinely helped us out of the kindness of their heart, gave us a bed to sleep in, and baked us a pie on top of it.” 

Coyote looked almost scared in his wide-eyed, puppy-like confusion. “I’m. I’m sorry.” 

“Come on,” Frisk says, standing up. “Let’s go say hi to the lovely pie-making monster lady who healed me.”


End file.
